Saeed Ajmal, now the highest-ranked spinner in the world, has England just where he wants them. They are talking about him, they are analysing him, they are fretting about him. It was not just Ajmal who bowled England out in the first Test. Somehow suddenly callow batsmen succumbed to Umar Gul on a track that was supposed to be a fast bowler's graveyard. That can be put down to carelessness, poor shot selection and clever, opportunistic bowling.

But Ajmal, all innocence in appearance and incapable of commanding a Test place until he was 31 years old, has sown insecurity and that can lead to a batsman's confidence swirling away as rapidly as bathwater. This is more serious than a few aberrations against Gul's bouncer. Forget Ajmal's mischievous, mythical teesra; it is his doosra that is causing so much anguish. The Englishmen cannot pick it and they are worried.

This means that there is a fascinating challenge ahead for each individual batsman before the next Test gets underway in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday. They can and probably will pore over footage of Ajmal bowling, looking for little signs of an imminent doosra, but the answer does not really reside in their laptops. It is in their heads.

Apart from Eoin Morgan, this group of Test batsmen have scored thousands of runs. They are hardy perennials, not to be underestimated; they have overcome setbacks before. They know how to play. But the challenge posed by Ajmal is more cerebral than technical. The threat is not sheer speed, steep bounce or late swing or, even in Dubai, vicious spin. It is that gnawing uncertainty: "Which way is the ball going to bounce? Can we cope if we don't know?"

First, the batsmen have to clear their minds. Andy Flower and his staff did his best to start that process at a team meeting on Thursday evening, the third day of the Test, which ignominiously became the last one as well. "The meeting was nowhere near the intensity of Jamaica [when England were bowled out for 51 in his first match in charge]", said Flower, "but it was important that we rounded off the game.

"If you don't talk about things they can remain like an elephant in the room, and we don't like that, so we needed to talk about it briefly, not to forget about it or pretend it didn't happen but to take responsibility for certain areas, where we underperformed badly, to learn lessons and then move on. And we've got to move on."

Flower also acknowledged that dealing with a collective batting failure is a complicated business. One former England fast bowler in Dubai – stationed not so very far from a microphone throughout most of the match – suggested semi-seriously that the solution was rather more straightforward: "You just shout at them [the batsmen]," he said. "Very loudly."

It is unlikely that Flower or his batting coach, Graham Gooch, will adopt such a policy. They will sit down with their batsmen individually "to help clarify their minds". No doubt this will involve discussing which shots are viable in these conditions and which are not.Flower recalled listening to John Hampshire, once of Yorkshire and England, as a young player. "He said that batting was not about being able to play all the shots but picking out which three or four shots would work in any given situation".

However, there will be no blanket instructions for England's batsmen. Flower stressed what is clearly the case: that each player has to go about his business in his own way when facing Ajmal, or anyone else. "Ultimately it is up to them. They have to believe in what they are doing."

One of the beauties of the game remains that the participants have to think on their feet rather than dutifully follow the coach's instructions. Yet the England coaches may hint that on low-bouncing pitches swinging across the line early in an innings does not constitute good risk management.

They will also remind the team that it is possible to score runs against a bowler they cannot pick. In the more distant past this was shown to be the case by the England batsmen who won the Ashes in Australia in 1970-71. Only Geoffrey Boycott could read the mystery bowler Johnny Gleeson and legend has it that he was a tad reluctant to tell the others how. But life is obviously more difficult when the batsman does not know.

Against Muttiah Muralitharan an educated guess could help. He spun the ball so much that if it was pitching outside of the right-hander's off-stump one could surmise that it was the off-break. If the ball pitched on the stumps the odds were on the doosra. The paradoxical problem for England in Dubai was that the ball was not spinning much at all for Ajmal, so any guesswork dependent upon the line of his deliveries was not so reliable.

On slow pitches – and one of those is expected in Abu Dhabi – it is possible, with an eagle eye, to adjust to the ball after it has hit the surface. Jonathan Trott, because his judgment of length was so good, managed this without much difficulty in Dubai. On Saturday Trott gave the impression that he could read Akmal (presumably he will tell the others). How? "I can't tell you that," he said. "It's a variation. There are a few ways the guys go about it – from the hand, in the air. That's about it."

Trott was keen to play down any concerns in the camp about Pakistan's match-winner. "It's similar when we lost a year ago at the WACA and how we were going to play Mitchell Johnson. I think we did OK then so I don't think it's too far away or unachievable for the guys to be able to do that in the next two Test matches".

The key, as Trott demonstrated in Dubai, is to survive for 20 minutes or so, whereupon batting can become relatively straightforward. As the body relaxes the eye can pick up the trajectory of the ball more easily and suddenly there is time to adjust. Meanwhile, each batsman, before taking guard, should have in his mind what are his run-scoring shots against the spinners. These will not be the same for Morgan as for Kevin Pietersen or Alastair Cook.

So much for the theory. The practice is trickier and Flower, who happened to be a brilliant player of spin, is concentrating his mind on how to help his batsmen. This is likely to preoccupy him far more than the balance of the side for the Abu Dhabi Test. "If we had a world-class all-rounder that would be the ideal," said Flower. "At the moment we don't. But I wasn't so worried about the balance of the bowling attack." (Sorry. Forgot to ask whether the injured Tim Bresnan qualifies as world class).

Clearly Stuart Broad does not yet come into this category. But for a man who has hit 169 in a Test innings against Pakistan at Lord's, it should surely be an aspiration. Yet there he was late on Thursday afternoon with England in the mire, trying to clear the fielder at long-on before looking in an aggrieved fashion at his bat after Shafiq had gratefully accepted the catch on the boundary.

It seemed that Broad's aspiration was to be an old-fashioned tail-end Charlie and not to have to return for the last rites on the fourth morning. His shot did not lose the match but it was a graphic illustration that all is not right in the head of those in the England camp. Therein lies the challenge for Flower and his management team until Wednesday – when the players take over.